****
Aisling walked up the ramp, smiling at all the occupants. She would have words with them all at another time. It wasn’t important now. Doc Matthews arrived as the kids walked out. He stopped them and gave them the once-over along with a few questions.
“Benjamin, I brought the doc along to check everyone out. Let’s take your helmet off and let him have a look at you.” To her surprise, he didn’t say anything, just began the process of removing it. “Let me take your weapons. I’ll keep them right here next to me.”
He stood and took off his rifle and then his swords. Next was his belt with pistol and knife. He handed Natalia’s pistol to her also. Another surprise was when he began taking all his armor off. In a few seconds, he was sitting back in his seat in his thermals.
“Are you feeling ok?” she asked.
“I’m fine. Go ahead, Doc, and do whatever you’re gonna do.”
Doc Matthews didn’t need to be told twice. He took the small injection gun and put it to Benjamin’s neck. There was a small poof of compressed gas and he was done.
“I’m sorry,” Aisling said.
“It’s no problem. I wanted to see if you’re like the others. You’re exactly the same, no different than Andrea or Tazleaha.”
His head fell against her shoulder. She cradled it and watched his blue eyes close as her eyes got glassy.
“He is just sleeping, Captain. There is no need for tears. He will be fine when he wakes up.”
“I don’t know, Doc. Maybe we should all be somewhere else when that happens.”
The End of Part One
Epilogue
Far away from the Empire of Cjittan, on the other side of the Khalnalax Empire, lay a void. Like the unprotected zone between Cjittan and Khalnalax, it was an unclaimed, desolate place older than the inhabited systems now claimed by warring Empires. It had once been the home for many races, all but a few of whom were now extinct. Those few were old, and they knew they had to leave their home worlds or face extinction like all the others who had gone before.
Their star ship was long and angular. Its black hull almost melted into the space around it. It was a warship with one purpose: aggression. The largest battleships and battle cruisers would not stand up against its firepower. It was conceived through the work of spies over the course of years who documented the ships of the Allond, Khalnalax, Trillond and Cjittan, and even the young Alliance did not know they were being observed.
They waited patiently for the time when the Khalnalax would grow tired of their own Empire and set their sights on another. Whispers in the ears of the right officials and the Emperor Khalnalax made it easy to encourage going to war with his cousins the Cjittan.
“Mistress, the council has not given permission to enter the Khalnalax Empire. We are to wait at the border for our orders.”
“Paudak, you are the council’s man, are you not? They placed you here to watch me and report back to them if I disobeyed any of their orders,” the Mistress said.
“That is correct, Mistress. I have offered no deception. The council did not wish that my purpose be kept secret.”
The Mistress wore black armor on her chest, and overlaying her breasts was a cowled figure with a face of bone except for the fire in its eyes. Its cowl flowed across her abdomen. It held a weapon in its boney hand that laid across its shoulders and curved back behind its head.
Paudak stared at her chest then back to where her face should be if her helmet visor hadn’t been so dark. She moved from her place of authority to her first officer’s position at the helm. She stroked the ridges on the sides of his head. The heavy plate of curved bone had a sensitivity that excited the recipient when touched from the front along the curve till its end at the base of the neck. Males and females alike were affected and the act was often foreplay and a precursor to mating. The Mistress knew a weakness when she saw one.
“Paudak, why was I chosen over your own kind to be the leader of this mission? This is why I was chosen.” The Mistress took both her hands and stroked Paudak’s ridges. When he tried to pull away, she held him by the shirt with one hand and stroked him with the other. He dropped on one knee before her. “Are you beginning to understand? I am not like you. I will not fall to my knees shuddering in pleasure by the mere touch of another’s hand. We are crossing the border and will move through the Khalnalax Empire, and if anything gets in our way we will destroy it.”
“I will have to report this to the council at once, Mistress. You understand.”
“Yes, of course I understand.” The Mistress stepped forward and grabbed Paudak around the throat with both hands. He grabbed her wrists, trying to free himself from her grip. She let go with one hand but then she slid a blade between his ribs.
The Mistress opened her visor and stared into Paudak’s eyes as she lowered him to the floor. She knelt on one knee and laid him down gently. “I had hoped you would come around to supporting me once we were away from the capital. I cannot fault your loyalty. It was just misplaced.” Paudak’s eyes fluttered as he drifted off. His mind not on a family or friend he would leave behind but on the pair of beautiful blue eyes, framed by hair as dark as the black, that held him until his world past away into darkness.
“Remove him from my presence. Are there any others who feel as Paudak did? Please come forward and offer your challenge now. If you do, I may have pity on you and spare you, but if you wait until the heat of battle and try to strike me down, then I will cut you up into bite-sized pieces and feed you to my pets.”
Two creatures lay on either side of her seat. They never moved during her confrontation with Paudak. They served her; she was their master. She was, like them, created by their first master, but he left them for dead and she found them. They knew their new master was also, like them, a creation. They looked up at her at the mention of being fed. Their reptilian eyes scanned their surroundings.
“Not yet, my babies, but soon. You will never go hungry. Soon there will be red skin and white skin and maybe reptilian. If the green skins object, you will dine on their flesh, too.”
“Mistress, what destination shall I enter?” her first officer asked.
“Kanlost in the Cjittan Empire, and make haste. I don’t want to be late for the reunion.”
Chronicles of Benjamin Jamison 4: Empires at War (Part One) Page 38
